Thursday, June 06, 2013

MCAS in Context

I was sad to see that former Massachusetts Commissioner David Driscoll told Iowans that Massachusetts achieved high performance because of high-stakes exams.

He knows the improvement of Massachusetts’ public schools involved a huge new public investment, more than $1 billion, equalizing funding across the state; tough new exams for new teachers; a heavy investment in early childhood education; and strong curriculum standards (which have since been abandoned for the Common Core standards). To pick out only testing as the cause of the state’s improvement is misleading.